CHAPTER ONE
April Fools’ Day
Skye Littleton fumbled to pull open a stubborn bag of popcorn when it rebelled and sent its contents exploding out and raining down like confetti. Crammed in the middle seat of a row in the coach section, thirty thousand feet over God knew where, she apologized to her seatmates for the assault and quietly cursed herself. The bag was no longer a bag but a cellophane remnant with a logo; thus, she had no place to dispose the liberated kernels but in her purse.
Great. That was her last snack.
She’d bought two granola bars, a Snickers bar, and the popcorn from the convenience store on the way to the airport, figuring that would tide her over until her Minneapolis layover. She ate the Snickers on the way to the gate, after she was cleared by TSA. She gave one of the granola bars to a mom whose kid was complaining. She ate the other one while waiting to board.
It wasn’t the flight that made her nervous, but who was waiting for her on the other end. Well, not nervous. More like excitedly anxious. The good kind. Like waiting for your favorite band to come onstage.
Chip, her blond tabby cat, lay in his carrier tucked under the seat; he was safely sedated yet still annoyed by his present incarceration, and communicated his dissatisfaction every few minutes. He sniffed at the stray popcorn but then snubbed it.
The college-aged boy (to Skye, any male under the age of twenty-five looked like a “boy”) to her left was so engrossed with the game on his phone, one involving tanks and machine guns, that he barely noticed the popcorn fracas. His noise-canceling headphones likely muted her apology too. The older man (not much older than she, although she was pretty bad at guessing such things) to her right, not knowing what to do with the kernels that had landed on his lap, handed them to her and smiled in a forgiving way. Without staring too much, she thought he looked a little like a rugged Robert Downey Jr., with a pockmark on his cheek in place of a dimple, hair graying at the temples, and cracked hands. He was dressed in blue jeans and paint-speckled work boots and your basic faded black Hanes T-shirt.
One hour into the flight to Minneapolis following a layover in Detroit, originally departing from Warwick, Rhode Island. Final destination: Billings, Montana.
Next stop: Happily ever after.
When the flight attendant came to their row and served them drinks and snacks (Diet Coke for her, coffee and Baileys for Robert Downey Jr. guy, pretzels for both; the boy to her left begged off and chugged from one of those tall Mountain Dew Kickstart cans), Skye made eye contact with her window seatmate and smiled sheepishly. At least she didn’t spill anything on him this time.
“Too bad there aren’t any complimentary pet snacks,” he said with a nod toward the cat.
“He’s not been annoying you, has he?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he replied. He flicked away a popcorn kernel wedged in his shirt collar, and she flushed with embarrassment. “Flying is pain-in-the-ass enough for adults. Must be pure torture for animals,” he said.
“At least he doesn’t have to take off his shoes.”
The man chuckled. “I’m Harvey, by the way,” he said, and he extended his hand.
She shook it. “Skye.”
“So where are you headed?” he asked and tacked on, “Final destination, I mean.”
“Billings,” she replied.
He lit up. “Hey, me too,” he said. She smiled. “What’s taking you there? Business or pleasure?”
She paused for a moment to munch on a pretzel before replying. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I just came back from a comics convention in Providence, where I dressed up as Captain America, so no, I won’t.”
For a split second, she pictured him in costume and stifled a giggle with a cough; it was like picturing someone in their underwear. Her eyes narrowed, as if determining whether to trust him. So far, he’d helped her load her carry-on into the overhead bin, made polite conversation with the flight attendant beyond please and thank you, and didn’t seem at all bothered by Chip’s protests.
Yes, she decided. He was trustworthy. Plus, it was just airplane talk, right? He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would live-tweet his entire flight (hashtag CrazyPassengers).
“I’m meeting someone,” she said.
He stared at her blankly, as if waiting for more.
“I mean, we know each other already,” she quickly added. “We’ve been talking for months now.”
“Talking?”
“We met online about six months ago,” she explained, “and we had this instant connection. It was like talking to a man who had known me my entire life. He just . . . got me.”
Vance Sandler. The name reverberated within her heart, as did his words and inflections every time they talked or texted.
She continued. “Online chatting led to phone calls and FaceTime”—and pet names and sharing best and worst memories and cultivating inside jokes—“which led to him coming to visit me in February.”
They’d spent a glorious three-day weekend together when he flew into Logan Airport in Boston seven weeks ago, and they toured the city and walked the Freedom Trail bundled up in forty-five-degree-but-sunny weather and stuffed themselves with seafood and made love in a hotel room overlooking the Charles River. She would have been just as happy holing up in her two-bedroom Warwick apartment, not far from the mall where she worked, but it had been so long since she’d been out, and she reveled in the romance of it all. Nonstop hand holding in Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, stolen kisses on the T, and feeding each other forkfuls of Boston cream pie.
Being with Vance Sandler was like being in a storybook come to life.
Harvey nodded slowly. “So now it’s your turn to visit him?”
She nodded as happy butterflies with heart-shaped wings fluttered inside her. “Not just visiting—moving!”
Chip howled in his carrier underneath the seat. Skye reached down and put her hand to the carrier’s mesh window so the cat could touch her fingers with his nose.
Harvey recoiled as if she’d spat at him. “That’s rather brave of you.”
Her smile faded. “How so?”
“Moving across the country for a guy you only spent one weekend with? And after knowing each other for a few months? I’m not knocking you, I’m just saying. It’s brave.”
Says the grown man who wears superhero costumes in public.
“Well, it’s about time I was adventurous,” she said.
“So why not just put off moving until you visit Billings first?”
Who is this guy, the Life Police? “Why should I? It’s not like there was anything holding me back in Rhode Island.” Well, except for the promotion to district manager that she’d turned down right before she quit her job at Top Drawer. Not that she’d ever wanted to devote her entire life to the retail lingerie chain.
“You might not like it,” he suggested.
“How bad could it be if a hundred thousand people already live there? Plus, it’s got a Target.”
“I guess so,” he said, clearly unconvinced.
“Well, what about you? You live there. What do you think?”
He considered her question. “I like it very much. In some ways, it’s a scrappy little town. In other ways, it’s an active, bustling city—not like New York or even Providence. But it has its appeal. Montana overall is incredible. But hey, now you know someone in Billings besides your boyfriend,” he said with an amiable smile.
Something within her stirred, like a breeze lifting a plastic bag in a carefree swirl, and made her eyes linger on him for just a split second longer than she was comfortable looking at a stranger. Until it hit her that the moment he said those words, he no longer felt like a stranger to her.
“How long have you lived there?”
“Going on ten years now. I started working for a pharmaceutical company in California, and they moved.”
“Hey, my boyfriend works for a pharmaceutical company too!” Her heart fluttered at boyfriend. Prior to being with Vance, it had been a long time since she’d used that word. “Maybe you know him!”
“Very likely. What’s his name?”
“Vance Sandler.”
Harvey’s face first turned pale, then red as a hot plate. Skye became alarmed. “What is it?”
He turned as far as he could in his seat to face her. “OK. We don’t know each other, so you can do whatever you want with what I have to say. It’s your life and none of my business. But if it’s at all possible, when we get to Minneapolis, turn around and get on a plane back to Rhode Island.”
The pitter-patter in her chest turned into thumping timpani drums. The conversation had gone from friendly to foreboding so fast, the pretzels suddenly tasted like slivers of balsa wood.
“You’re going to have to explain why you just scared the shit out of me,” she said.
“Vance Sandler is bad news. Worse than bad news. He’s a Venus flytrap.”
Impossible. He sent her long-stem roses. He blew kisses to her from across the country. He texted her love notes at 2:00 a.m.
Skye glowered at him. “You’re right,” she snapped. “It’s none of your business.” She wished she could borrow her left seatmate’s noise-canceling headphones so she could tune Harvey out. But it was too late. He’d gotten into her head.
“My apologies,” he said, sounding somewhere between remorseful and irked. “I wish you all the best.” He plugged his own headphones into a tablet and leaned back in his seat.
Skye sat upright, jarred by the submarine alarm that was sirening between her ears. She waited for it to quiet, but to no avail. Just as Harvey closed his eyes, Skye interrupted.
“Hang on. You can’t just dump something like that on me. Why should I turn around? What’s wrong with Vance?”
He opened his eyes and peered at her. “I told you. He’s a bad guy. Villainous. He makes assholes look like angels.” He said it matter-of-factly.
“How do you even know him?”
“We worked for the same company. I’m not there anymore.”
“What, did he take your job or something?” She didn’t mean for the question to sound as inconsiderate as it had come out, but she couldn’t help her defensiveness. She paid for it too.
“No, thanks for asking.” He shook his head in mild exasperation. Whether it was with himself for saying anything in the first place or with her for challenging him, she wasn’t sure.
“Then what makes him so awful?”
He locked in on her so determinedly that she couldn’t avoid his eyes even if she wanted to. A storm seemed to be brewing behind them, as if he were fighting whatever had compelled him to share his thoughts on the subject of Vance Sandler in the first place. And she realized she was bracing herself, as if a crash were imminent.
“Because he stole my wife,” he said.